


steer your heart past the truth you believed in yesterday

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Mortality, Poetry, Post-Canon, Trauma, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25872160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: Either his absence or the scritch of the pencil wakes Nicky enough to turn over and seek the warmth of his arm. Joe feels him blink against his chest.“Sad as hell, Joe,” he says after a minute. It is as detailed a poetry critique as Nicky ever offers.Joe kisses the top of his head.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 418





	steer your heart past the truth you believed in yesterday

Yusuf wakes, and before the dream can fade, before he remembers which century it is, he lets go of Nicolò and reaches for the sketchbook. He keeps it under his pillow, next to--ah, it’s the twenty-first century--a 9mm. 

He could make it a sketch, but the dream was mostly sensation and impression, so instead he writes: 

_The weight of gold_ _  
__In her nostril, and_ _  
__The scent of mango_ _  
__Bows the bride’s head_ _  
__She would like to tell her mother_ _  
__Of the portrait she carries_ _  
__But these arrangements_ _  
__Have been made_

Either his absence or the scritch of the pencil wakes Nicky enough to turn over and seek the warmth of his arm. Joe feels him blink against his chest. 

“Sad as hell, Joe,” he says after a minute. It is as detailed a poetry critique as Nicky ever offers. 

Joe kisses the top of his head. 

* * *

For a week since London, they haven’t stopped moving. They arrived at this safehouse late last night, and only unpacked the necessities. The upshot is that it has separate bedrooms. But the cupboard is bare, and Nile is having none of it. “I’m going to get groceries,” she announces when Joe and Nicky roll out of bed and into the kitchen. “Just because we can survive on shelf-stable cereal doesn’t mean we _should_.” 

Joe tears a page from the sketchbook, and puts it and his pencil into Nicky’s waiting hand. Then he unfolds cash from his wallet and gives that to Nile. She has her own, but it’s for emergencies, and this is for family. 

“Be careful,” Andy tells her. She is perched like a gargoyle on the edge of the counter with a cup of instant coffee in her hands. 

“I will,” Nile promises. She takes the car keys from the hook by the door, and looks over the list Nicky hands her. “You really think I’m going to find polenta around here?” 

“I believe in you,” Nicky says. 

Nile rolls her eyes, but Joe is certain he isn’t imagining the way she goes with her chin high and shoulders square. On a mission. 

When she’s gone, Andy hops down from the counter so Joe and Nicky can mix up their own shitty coffee. She sits at the table. “Copley’s putting together some options for us.” 

“We have options now,” Nicky marvels. 

Joe frowns at his coffee. Before the Sudan clusterfuck, before Andy’s year-long break, it was growing harder and harder to be in the right place at the right time. No sooner would they finish a job than they would find out about three other catastrophes where they could have done something. 

It was, in Joe’s opinion, a good argument for starting cells. One of them on each continent, hand-picking agents and training them and giving assignments. He hashed it out with Booker many times, but Andy always shot it down. Whatever they did, they did together. 

Copley has lines of communication they never did, access to information that doesn’t make the headlines. Options will mean choosing, weighing lives against other lives. Knowing they could have chosen to be somewhere else--a new flavor of regret for a new millennium. 

Andy says, “I want to talk about what we can do different in the future.”

Joe peers at her. “Should we table this until Nile gets back?” 

“We’ll discuss it with her too.” Andy takes a breath, eyes on the tabletop. “She worries about me, in a way you don’t. She doesn’t subscribe to it being my time.” 

“Well.” Joe sits across from her. “She just met you. Give her a couple years.” 

Andy kicks his boot, but halfheartedly. 

“You want us to back you up,” Nicky says. 

“I want you to get where she’s coming from. There will be jobs where it’s just the three of you. Where it will take all three of you to make me stay behind.” 

Joe looks to Nicky. Nicky furrows his brow. 

“I know you think you can’t do that,” Andy says, “but you were both on board with the Sudan job before I knew anything about it.” 

That is cheap and unfair. “That doesn’t mean we would have ever done it without you--”

Andy holds up a hand. “I know. That’s what’s going to be different now. I can tell Copley to give us the most incendiary shit he can find, and I can be gone in a week. Or…” She gestures vaguely at herself. 

Joe waits, but whatever the alternative is, Andy can’t give voice to it. She blows a breath out through her nose, and stands up. “I’m going for a walk.” 

“Be careful, boss,” Nicky says. Andy squeezes his arm in passing. 

When the door shuts behind her, Joe says, “Downer morning all around.” 

He’s starving. The coffee isn’t strong enough. For the first time in almost three decades, he wants a cigarette. 

Nicky drags a chair over next to him, and puts his hand in Joe’s hair. He works his fingertips against Joe’s scalp. Joe leans over to press his brow to Nicky’s. 

For a while they stay like that, and Joe tries to see it like Andy. If it were him, he would stay as long as he could, dial it down as far as he could, no matter how it ran counter to every instinct, for Nicky’s sake. That is, provided the power that blessed them in unison is cruel enough to remove that blessing years or centuries apart. 

(He will not deign to consider that it would be taken from Nicky first. Unthinkable.) 

That Andy wants to live long enough to find Quynh is self-evident. And Joe suspected, but now he’s certain: she wants to live for Nile, too. 

“There’s nothing I want to do without her,” he says. 

“I know,” Nicky says. He puts his hand on Joe’s cheek, turns Joe’s face to his, kisses him gently. “I know.” 

They’ll have to confront that for real, before long. For now he loses himself in the tender landscape of kissing Nicky. Of Nicky’s hands, warm on his face. Of the taste of Nicky’s mouth, under the taste of coffee. Of a dawning low desire that could burn higher if he were to stand and take Nicky’s hands and draw him away, back to bed. 

Outside, a car door slams. Joe hangs a moment longer at Nicky’s bottom lip before he leans back and brushes his knuckles over Nicky’s cheek. 

As soon as Nile walks in, Joe smells it. For a moment he isn’t sure he ever woke up. “Really?” Nicky says. 

“I thought you might have a craving.” Nile sets the mango down in front of Joe, alongside the grocery list with the poem on the other side of the page. He beams up at her. The mango is exceedingly ripe and fragrant. As Nile carries the grocery bags to the counter and Andy carries in another pair of bags and Nicky gets up to help, Joe unfolds his pocketknife and starts to slice it. Andy brings a bowl and a rag to catch the juice. 

“What did you think of it?” Joe asks. 

“The poem?” Nile’s face is turned away as she unbags vegetables, perishables. Real coffee, milk--and, yes, polenta. A box of elbow macaroni and a block of sharp cheddar, neither of which Nicky would ask for, but if Nile wants to cook she can cook. “I was kind of surprised it was in English,” she says. 

A neutral and diplomatic answer. “They aren’t all.” It isn’t the most poetic language at his disposal, but it was the first that came to him on waking. “But what did you think of it?” he presses. 

Nile checks over her shoulder. She has yet to learn that she cannot offend him. The poet must not avert his eyes. “The last two lines were a little flat,” she ventures. 

Andy, otherwise perfectly still, arches one brow. Nicky looks from Nile to Joe. “Beloved,” he says softly. 

“No, no.” Joe nods bravely. “She’s right, they were flat.” He keeps nodding, and chews his lower lip. 

Nile’s eyes grow bigger and bigger--but Nicky lets his expression crack first, and Nile realizes they’re messing with her, and she chucks a wadded grocery bag at Joe. He slaps it out of the air and laughs at her. “Have some mango,” he says. 

They do. The juice gets everywhere. The fruit breaks his fast with fulfilling coolness. “Do you have more?” Nile asks when they’ve eaten every piece. 

Joe wipes his hands and passes her the sketchbook. She cleans her fingers too, before opening it. There’s a lot of Nicky in it--it’s Nicky all the way down honestly--but no nudes to traumatize her. 

“All fragments?” she says. 

“When one’s life is an epic, one comes to prefer vignettes.” Nile makes a face at him. 

Then she reaches another torn-out page, and stiffens. “Wait. Where’s the rest of this? Was this--” 

Andy gets up from the table in her abrupt and startling way, looking tired. She stops by Nile’s chair, digs a piece of paper out of her pocket, and sets it down on the table before her. 

Nile unfolds it, spreads it flat, lines up the ragged edges like a treasure map. The chopper, the houses, the hijabi woman, and Nile’s own face staring out. For a long time she stares back. 

“Did any of you see, uh…” Her left hand gestures, fingertips to thumbtip almost like Nicky does when he gets demonstrative, but this has the shade of a tic to it. “A man. An Afghan. His name was Sadeq. He was a militant, he…” 

Joe glances to Andy. Andy shakes her head. “What did he look like?” Nicky asks. 

Nile shuts her eyes and takes a steadying breath. “Slight. Narrow shoulders. A beard. A crooked nose. He had blood on his teeth. His eyes were… scared. Even when he was cutting my throat, he looked scared.” She opens her eyes again, but doesn’t look up from the paper. “I guess I’m the only one who gets to dream about him.” 

“Who else, Nile?” says Andy, softly. 

Of course Nile hears the double meaning. She sighs. “Everyone in that whole damn building.” 

They know how hard she tried to avoid killing and still get them all out. Joe saw the look on her face in the lab, when she and Andy shot down the guards. He would like to tell her she shouldn’t regret it, that everyone she had to kill was a sadistic bastard concerned solely with cruelty and self-gain. 

But just because an act is righteous doesn’t mean it won’t follow you. 

Joe has dreamt of killing Keane every night. 

Carefully Nile folds the sketch of her up, and gives it back to Andy. Andy tucks it away again. Nile turns the page on her death, for now. 

A moment later she says, “This is good imagery.” Joe smiles. 

* * *

They are fresh from the shower, where Nicky opened him up meticulously. The heating isn’t great in this house and the water was already cold and colder now on his skin, but he is warm enough everywhere that Nicky is. 

Alight, everywhere that Nicky is. 

They are practiced at doing things quietly, but there are times Nicolò makes that so difficult. He has one hand around Joe’s cock, and the other low on Joe’s back to fold him forward, and of course, of course, there’s Nicky inside him, strong and steady. Joe has his hands pressing deep into the mattress, and one knee too; the other foot is braced on the floor by Nicky’s. How he burns. Joe goes to his elbows to get his face against the bed and remind himself not to cry out, for all that Nicky is being terribly gentle. 

And then Nicky’s other hand slides forward to grasp Joe too, as if he is an extension of Nicky, as if bodies joined are bodies merged. “Tell me, Yusuf,” he says against the nape of Joe’s neck, “tell me.” 

But words fail him. Joe moans, loud. Though this is inevitable with both of Nicky’s hands around him, he still isn’t ready for it. There is a sweetness to the way he comes unexpectedly, the fact that it can still sneak up on him and rob his breath. 

His arms shake and he lets them give out. Only one final effort from his bent leg keeps him from collapsing into the mess on the sheet. He lands to the side of it instead, with Nicky laughing youthfully in his ear. He is also very close, Joe can feel that. 

He reaches behind him and Nicky intercepts his hands, holds them at the small of Joe’s back, and rolls his hips. Joe makes a broken sound, and Nicky adjusts his grip to get one hand into Joe’s hair. To soothe, even as he works out his pleasure. 

Nicky gasps when he comes, as if he’s coming back to life. He shudders and finally stills, half on and half off of Joe’s back. A moment like that, and their sweat starts to cool along with the water. Joe sidles out from under him and finds one of their discarded towels, so he has an excuse to grab at Nicky’s hair and hold him in place and kiss him until his lips (which still taste like mango) are swollen. He loves this man, he loves this man. 

“I was thinking,” says Nicky, when Joe let’s him up to breathe. 

“I wasn’t,” says Joe. The oblivion Nicky bestows on him is, all idioms aside, far cleaner than a death and more enduring. 

Nicky’s Adam’s apple bobs with quiet laughter, and Joe tucks his face there. Nicky turns on his side to better accept him. “I was thinking about what we can do different,” he says. 

“What happened to _all things die_?” 

Nicky draws back enough to look Joe in the eye. He asks a silent question, and the answer is no. No, Joe is not ready. He swallows, and Nicky pulls him in again. 

“So. We have options. We can choose where to be. Maybe sometimes, we can choose to be in two places at once.” 

“Splitting up?” The last time--

Nicky’s hand settles at the back of Joe’s head, keeping him here. “It’s not the 1500s. Nile is not Quynh. And that’s the other thing.” 

“Quynh,” Joe says. 

Nicky hums an agreeing note. “It will take time to find her. And they will need time, after.” 

“Nothing is guaranteed, my heart.” But he is thinking about it, despite himself. Nicky’s conviction has a way of bleeding over. 

When ( _when_ ) they find Quynh, it will mean many things. A team of five, not four, for the first time. Someone older than him on the jobs Andy sits out, someone to bring the stabilizing gravity of experience. Peace for Andy, or something that looks like it. Without another to share this life with, they risk being lost in their own mythology, and accepting it as the truth of them. 

And for Nile: an end to those particular dreams, at least. One day she may even sleep uninterrupted--or wake with the scent of the dream of someone whose life might never intersect hers. A reminder that not everyone in this world is acquainted with bloodshed, though they all are with sorrow. 

“All right?” Nicky says. 

Well. It’s a start. “You’re very wise,” he says to Nicky’s clavicle. 

Against his brow, the tiny movements of neck and jaw that signify Nicky smiling. Smugly. Nicky says, “I am.” And he turns over, so Joe can hold him. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Steer Your Way" by Leonard Cohen. 
> 
> Massive thanks to @metapphjores for betaing. 
> 
> Cheers for reading! I'm on Tumblr @hauntedfalcon if you want to yell with me about The Old Guard.


End file.
